PEORIA — A Peoria County judge has ordered county officials to explain why temperatures in his courtroom on Monday reached 80 degrees and no one had alerted him or others about it.

Circuit Judge Kevin Lyons gave County Administrator Lori Curtis Luther seven days to give him a written plan on how people are made aware of problems within the Peoria County Courthouse and who is responsible for such a plan.

While complaints about the climate control system in the courthouse have long been heard, Lyons wrote in his five-paragraph order to Luther that “no business could be conducted due to the sultry and uncomfortable temperatures and conditions.”

Lyons canceled all his hearings Monday morning and moved them to Tuesday. He also had Assistant County Administrator Scott Sorrell appear before him and explain what happened. Sorrell told the judge a power outage had occurred, but from the order, it is clear Lyons didn’t believe that.

“The Court is of the opinion that these repeat events occurred due to the neglect of the department and the a failure to know the operations and the conditions of the building,” the judge wrote.

Late on Monday, Sorrell said the building suffered a power failure about 5:50 a.m. along with other parts of Downtown.

“At the time of the outage, the courthouse’s cooling system and building automation were operating normally,” he said. “Regrettably, the primary chiller did not come back online as it is supposed to once power was restored.

“Furthermore, our building automation did not completely reset once power was restored. This resulted in the cooling systems being offline for a period of time.”

Lyons, along with Chief Judge Steve Kouri, has led the charge to improve the conditions of the building’s courtrooms. He and Kouri took several County Board members on a tour of the building last week during a public safety committee meeting to showcase what the judges think are areas in need of immediate attention.

Among the items were worn-out carpet, technology that doesn’t work properly, stains on some walls and the need to make some areas compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

When reached, Kouri said he had no public comment.

Sorrell admitted things did get uncomfortable and said the county was “investigating why our primary chiller did not come back online as designed once power was restored, and why the building automation system did not completely reset.”

“Where possible, corrective actions will be taken to try and prevent a future recurrence of today,” he said.

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.